Port of Salalah has been announced the first port in the world to have succeeded in meeting requirements set by the Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) consulting body and officially kickoff a four-year journey towards a completely efficient, zero-breakdown port.

In a celebration kickoff attended by Port of Salalah’s management and 70 initial TPM team members, twelve model machine team leaders presented how they tackled the poorest of each major machine at the container terminal, for instance, a crane with a monthly average of 14 failures or more than 300 abnormalities.

“When our Process Excellence team first introduced the target of zero breakdowns it seemed impossible. After rolling out TPM we proved that zero breakdowns is possible and achievable through teamwork between departments.  This means culture change and understanding of operators to take ownership of their equipment,” said Mustafa Al Balushi, TPM Manager at the Port of Salalah.

To reach the crucial kickoff milestone, the teams were expected to show how the TPM framework was applied to the port’s machines to achieve zero breakdowns and sustained over a period of no less than five months. Transforming the six model machines from having the highest breakdown frequency to zero breakdowns was achieved within a total of ten months. In effect, total average breakdowns were reduced by 72% while mean time between failures was increased by 223%.

Originating in Japan by Japanese Institute of Plant Maintenance, TPM is based on an eight pillar framework which aims to achieve zero breakdowns, zero accidents and zero defects. “We are very pleased to confirm that Port of Salalah is the first port in the world to reach this achievement and wish the team continued success in this initiative,” said Abdul Wadood, TPM Consultant at Confederation of Indian Industries TPM Club India.

“We were able to reach to this milestone because of high commitment from our teams towards continuous improvement and customer satisfaction, and working as one team between all departments in the organization to achieve best standards in workplace safety and productivity,” said Abdellatif Reghif, Head of Process Excellence at the Port of Salalah, adding, “this would not have been possible without the drive and exemplary leadership that is taking place here inside the terminal and making waves throughout our network. Today we have visitors from ports all over the world coming here to see how we achieved this milestone.”

Ahmed Akaak, Acting CEO at the Port of Salalah, said during his speech, “We are very proud that Port of Salalah is the frontrunner for the TPM initiative being rolled out at within the extensive APM Terminals worldwide network of ports. This is a journey that will take a few years to implement correctly, and we are confident that we have the talent, experience and tools that will ensure that Salalah is the first port in the world to feature zero breakdowns at its state of the art terminal.”

Having successfully passed the pilot phase, the TPM team at Port of Salalah has now expanded to include 200 port employees, and will tackle 50 of the port’s major machines across more departments including the general cargo terminal and the marine department.

TPM Salalah has adopted its own logo and tagline to inspire the port’s departments across operations, engineering, marine and maintenance. The logo is in part a requirement set by the JIPM TPM Deployment approach and requires that each company implementing TPM to create a logo which represents teamwork, the industry of the company, and the cogs of machinery. “We involved the team leaders on the ground to ensure that the slogan ‘Care, Excel, Win’ captures precisely what our internal customers need to know, do and feel about TPM,” said Hala Srouji, GM Corporate Communications at the Port of Salalah.